Moving back to Ghana, realistically

The shape of the first ninety days

The first ninety days back in Ghana are not one job but three, and they arrive in a fixed order: paperwork, then housing and logistics, then the slower business of work, schooling and routine. Trying to do them in parallel is what exhausts people.

Almost every administrative door in Ghana opens with the same key. You need a Ghana Card before a bank will finish opening your account, before a telecom shop will register a line in your own name properly, and before most offices will process anything for you. So the first two or three weeks belong to identity and address, not to furniture.

Housing comes second because it depends on cash rather than time, and the cash requirement is blunter than most returnees expect. After that, the rest — a car, a school place, a licence, a business registration — moves at whatever pace the relevant office moves. If you are coming back for a short look first rather than a permanent move, our guide to making a first trip back to Ghana covers the lighter version of the same ground.

What to sort out before you get on the plane

Do three things before you fly: settle your legal status, gather original documents, and arrange somewhere to stay for at least the first six weeks. Everything else can wait until you land.

Status first. If you were born Ghanaian and now hold another passport, your position depends on whether Ghana recognises you as a dual citizen, whether you hold Right of Abode, or whether you will be entering as a foreign national and need a residence permit. These are genuinely different routes with different paperwork, and the Ghana Immigration Service is the only source worth trusting on current requirements, fees and processing times. Confirm directly with them or the Ghanaian mission covering where you live, and start the process months ahead rather than weeks. We have set out how the categories differ in our explainer on Ghanaian citizenship and Right of Abode.

Then documents. Bring originals, not photocopies, and bring more of them than you think you need: birth certificate, marriage certificate, academic and professional certificates, driving licence, children's school reports and transcripts, vaccination records, and any letter from an employer confirming your work history. Ghanaian offices ask for originals and hand them back; they will not accept a photo on your phone. Scan everything as well and keep the scans somewhere you can reach without your laptop.

Finally, book six weeks of accommodation before you fly. Not three nights. You will not find and secure a house in three nights, and looking for one from a hotel room while jet-lagged and paying nightly rates makes people rush into bad leases.

Arrival week: Kotoka, a SIM card and cash

Your first week should produce three things — a working Ghanaian phone number, some cash in hand, and a reliable way to move around — and nothing else.

Kotoka's Terminal 3 is orderly but slow at peak, and the peak is the cluster of overnight arrivals from Europe and the Gulf that lands in the early morning. Immigration, then baggage, then the walk out into the heat and the crowd at the meeting point. If you are arriving with three suitcases, two children and no local number, arrange a pickup in advance rather than negotiating at the rank at six in the morning.

Get a SIM card early, but understand that registration in Ghana is tied to biometric identity verification, so a visitor's line and a resident's line are not registered the same way. Ask the operator — MTN, Telecel or AirtelTigo — what they require from someone in your position; shop staff will tell you the current rule faster than any website.

For money, expect a mixed economy. Cards work in Accra's supermarkets, fuel stations and larger restaurants, and nowhere near a roadside stall, a trotro or a plumber. Mobile money fills that gap. Until your line is fully registered, carry cedis in small denominations and change money at a licensed forex bureau rather than on the street.

The Ghana Card, and why everything waits for it

The Ghana Card is the single document that unblocks the rest of your life here, and you should start the application in your first fortnight.

It is issued by the National Identification Authority, and the process involves an in-person appointment where your biometrics and supporting documents are captured. What you need to bring depends on your category — Ghanaian by birth, naturalised citizen, dual citizen, or foreign national resident — and the NIA is the source to confirm requirements, current processing arrangements and any fee. Do not rely on what a friend went through two years ago; the categories and the premises have both changed since.

The frustrating part is the dependency chain. Banks will typically begin an account for you but not complete it without the card. Telecom operators need it for full registration in your name. The DVLA will want it when you convert your foreign driving licence. Some landlords and estate agents ask for it as part of tenant checks. So a delay on the card is not a delay on one thing; it stalls four or five at once.

Work around it where you legitimately can. Use your passport for what a passport is accepted for, ask your bank what a partially completed account allows you to do in the meantime, and get a family member with an established address to help evidence where you live. Then keep chasing the card itself.

Finding somewhere to live, and the rent advance

The hardest financial fact about moving back to Ghana is that most landlords expect one to two years of rent paid in a single lump sum before you receive keys, and you should budget for that before you budget for anything else.

This is normal practice rather than a scam, though it sits uneasily with tenancy law, and it is not usually negotiable for a good property in a competitive area. It also changes how you should think about the search: you are not committing to a monthly payment, you are committing a large amount of capital to a house you have seen once, possibly in the dark, possibly in the rain.

Where you look depends on what you are optimising for. East Legon, Cantonments and Airport Residential are convenient and expensive. Spintex is well served and traffic-bound. Adenta, Oyarifa and the Aburi road give you space and a longer commute. West of the city, Kasoa and Weija along the Accra–Cape Coast road have grown enormously and give you far more house for the money, with the Kasoa interchange traffic as the price you pay every morning. Tema and Community 25 suit anyone whose work is at the port or in industry.

Visit in the evening as well as in the day. Ask about the water supply, specifically whether the property has a polytank and a pump, because piped supply is intermittent in many neighbourhoods and a house without storage is miserable. Ask about the generator or inverter, the state of the access road in the rains, and who the neighbours are — a church, a bar or a welder next door changes your nights considerably. Get a written tenancy agreement, get receipts for every payment, and be wary of anyone who pushes you to pay before you have seen the landlord's own documents. If you are planning to build rather than rent, our piece on building a house in Ghana from abroad deals with land title and contractor supervision in detail.

Banking, transfers and how money actually moves

Open a Ghanaian bank account in your first month, but expect to run three parallel systems for a while: a foreign account, a local account and mobile money.

Most banks will open both a cedi account and a foreign currency account for a returnee, and the foreign currency account is worth having if you will continue receiving income from abroad. Bring your passport, proof of address, your Ghana Card when you have it, and be prepared for the process to take more than one visit. Branches in Accra are busy; go early in the morning rather than at lunchtime.

Mobile money is not a fallback, it is the default. Rent top-ups, artisans, market purchases, school fees at some schools, transport, deliveries — all of it moves over MoMo. Once your line is registered in your own name and linked to your identity, you can send and receive within seconds, and the interoperability between networks means the recipient's network rarely matters. Charges apply and the operators publish the current tariffs; check with your network rather than assuming.

On transfers from abroad, compare the total cost rather than the advertised rate, because the spread on the exchange rate usually matters more than the visible fee. The cedi has a long history of depreciating against major currencies, which argues for keeping savings you will not need soon in foreign currency and converting as you go.

Shipping your things, and clearing them at Tema

Sea freight to Tema Port takes several weeks in transit and then a further stretch to clear, so ship before you fly and travel with enough to live on for two months.

The choice is between a full container, a shared container and simply not shipping, and people consistently overestimate how much of what they own is worth the freight. Ghanaian-made furniture is good and often cheaper than moving your old set across an ocean, and appliances built for a different voltage are a nuisance. Ship what you cannot replace: books, tools, specialist equipment, and a car if you have thought hard about the duties.

Clearing is where the time goes. You will need a clearing agent, and the agent's competence is the main variable in how long you wait and what you pay. Duties are assessed on the goods and on the vehicle if you ship one, and the rules on vehicle age and valuation change — the Ghana Revenue Authority Customs Division is the source to confirm with before you commit to shipping a car, not a forum post. Build in demurrage risk: once a container sits at the port beyond the free period, costs start accruing daily, and that is the bill that ruins budgets.

Label everything and photograph the contents as you pack. If a box is opened for inspection, a detailed inventory is the difference between a short conversation and a long one.

Getting around: cars, drivers and the traffic reality

You will need your own transport within the first month or two, and in Accra a car with a driver is a more realistic option than most returnees assume.

Start with the licence. A foreign driving licence is not a long-term solution; the DVLA runs a conversion process for holders of foreign licences, and you should confirm the current requirements and steps with the DVLA directly. Bring your original licence, not a photocopy, and expect at least one wasted trip to whichever office you are sent to.

Then the driving itself. Accra traffic is not merely heavy, it is dense and improvisational: trotros stopping wherever a passenger raises a hand, hawkers between lanes at the Tetteh Quarshie and Kwame Nkrumah interchanges, motorbikes on both sides of you, and unlit hazards after dark. Potholes appear overnight in the rains. Road markings are advisory. If you have spent twenty years driving in Manchester or Maryland, the first month here is genuinely stressful, and a driver who knows the routes and the rhythms costs less than the accident you avoid.

If you buy, let parts availability decide rather than badge appeal: every mechanic in Accra knows Toyota and Hyundai, while something less common means waiting for a part to arrive from abroad. Have any used car inspected by a mechanic you chose, not one the seller suggested.

Work, schools and healthcare

These three take the longest and cannot be rushed, which is why they belong to the back half of the ninety days rather than the front.

On work, the honest picture is that salaries in cedis rarely match what the same role pays abroad, and returnees expecting equivalence are disappointed. What works instead is remote work paid in foreign currency, consulting into the local market, or building something of your own. Registering a business goes through the Office of the Registrar of Companies, followed by the Ghana Revenue Authority and, if you employ people, SSNIT. Confirm current steps and fees with those offices directly.

Schools are competitive and money alone does not secure a place. The international schools in Accra follow British, American or IB curricula and keep waiting lists; the better Ghanaian private schools are academically strong and cheaper, with longer days and a more formal culture than your children may be used to. Apply before you arrive, bring the last two years of reports in original form, and expect entrance assessments.

For healthcare, register with the National Health Insurance Scheme and treat it as a floor rather than a ceiling; most people who can afford it also carry private cover. Identify your nearest hospital and a GP in the first month, before you need one at two in the morning, and bring a supply of any regular prescription plus the generic name of the drug, because brand names differ.

The adjustments nobody warns you about

The hardest parts of moving back are rarely the official ones — they are power, water, noise, time and the quiet business of being treated as a foreigner in your own country.

Electricity supply has improved but is not uniform, and an outage on a hot night without a fan is a long night. Most households of any means run an inverter with batteries or a small generator, and it is worth sorting that out before the first cut rather than after. Water is the same story: piped supply comes and goes by area, a polytank and pump make it invisible, and their absence makes it the centre of your week.

Noise is constant and starts early. Churches hold dawn services, mosques call before first light, a neighbour's generator runs at ten at night, and the drinking spot down the road has speakers pointed at your bedroom. People who arrive expecting suburban quiet are unhappy for about six months and then adapt.

Time works differently too. An appointment for ten often means eleven, a tradesman who says tomorrow may mean the day after, and pushing harder does not speed things up — following up warmly and repeatedly does.

And then the social part. If you grew up abroad, or left long ago, you will be read as a foreigner: in your accent, in the prices first quoted to you at Makola, in the assumption that you have money. Some of that is affectionate and some of it is transactional. Learning enough Twi or Ga to greet properly and ask a price changes how you are treated more than almost anything else you can do.

A workable ninety-day sequence

If you want one ordering that works, run the three months as identity, then housing, then everything else — and accept that at least one item will slip.

1. Weeks one to two: arrive, arrange a pickup and short-let accommodation, get a SIM registered, change money, start the Ghana Card application, and open a bank account as far as it can go without the card.
2. Weeks three to six: search for housing in two or three shortlisted areas, visit at different times of day, negotiate and check documents, pay the advance and take keys. Chase the Ghana Card. Confirm your immigration status paperwork with the Ghana Immigration Service.
3. Weeks seven to ten: complete the bank account, arrange water storage and backup power, register with NHIS, find a hospital and a mechanic, begin the DVLA licence conversion, and track your container if you shipped one.
4. Weeks eleven to thirteen: clear the container, buy a vehicle or arrange a regular driver, finalise school places, and register a business if that is the plan.

Two things make this go faster: a trusted person on the ground who can queue at an office when you cannot, and a willingness to return to the same counter a third time without losing your temper.

Nothing here is difficult. It is just slow, and it is slow in a different way than you are used to.

How we help people coming home

Ghana Travel & Tour works with returnees at the practical end of the move: airport pickup at Kotoka with enough vehicle for the luggage, a serviced private home in Kasoa for the weeks between landing and signing a lease, a car with a driver while you learn the roads, and support with passport and visa paperwork for the family members following you out. We also sit with people who have not yet committed and talk through what the move actually costs in time.

You can see what the houses are like on our private stays in Kasoa page. Every quote is itemised and comes from a named trip manager you can reach directly on WhatsApp.

Questions people ask